SDCC 07: Favreau Flies In For Iron Man

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Director debuts four minutes of footage, shows special effects "tests."

By Todd Gilchrist

On Thursday, July 26, 2007, Jon Favreau premiered footage of Iron Man at the San Diego Comic-Con. Following a taped introduction, Favreau showed some early special effects footage from the film. "Hi, I'm Jon Favreau, the director of Iron Man," Favreau said as he sat in front of computer monitor. "I'd like to thank all of you for coming out to Comic-Con and attending this panel. I'm sorry I couldn't be there - I'm stuck here in the editing room because we just wrapped production and we're just beginning the editorial process. We've also been getting in some very early animation tests and I thought as a special treat you might want to see some of our early tests for our visual effects."

"Without further ado, here's an exclusive peek at some of the preliminary animation from the movie Iron Man," Favreau said. The camera zoomed in on the monitor and began playing the footage, which was actually from the original 1960s cartoon series. When the footage ended and the lights went back up, Favreau was on stage filming the audience with a digital camera.

"How's it going, everybody?" Favreau asked. "We finished filming and it went great, and as you know we did a lot of stuff using practical effects. With the folks at Stan Winston, we built some suits and things. And we're doing some stuff with ILM and some smaller houses just for the CG portion, with the Mark III, and we're coming out May 2nd. I wasn't scheduled to come out here but I was able to get away a little early."

After joking with the audience they will miss great footage from the film at the Marvel panel on Saturday, Favreau decided to screen some scenes from Iron Man. In the clip, which ran approximately four minutes, Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) pitches his company's military weaponry and fields questions from reporters. Following an incident in Afghanistan, Stark awakens to discover that he has a strange device affixed to his chest. A man explains that he saved Stark's life by removing shrapnel from his chest and hooking up a car-battery-powered electromagnet to his heart. After he recovers more fully, Stark builds a bulky metallic suit (the Mark I armor) and uses it to escape - albeit awkwardly.

After this sequence with the Mark I, the footage shuttles through a montage of images, including Stark's upgraded armor for the Mark II and III models. Finally, Iron Man squares off against two F-14 jets before zooming off into the stratosphere. "You know what's cool about that?" asked Favreau. "Except for the last five shots, everything else is practical. We haven't even done the digital work for this yet. So you're in for a real big treat."

Stay tuned to IGN for more news and updates about this and other exciting new projects!